FAA Computer Failure Disrupts Travel

Malfunction In Atlanta Air Traffic Control System Magnified When Backup Failed

(AP)  A cascading computer failure in the nation's air-traffic control system caused severe flight delays and some cancellations along the East Coast Friday.

A computer system in Atlanta that processes pilots' flights plans and sends them to air-traffic controllers failed late Thursday or early Friday, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said. In response, the agency rerouted the system's functions to another computer in Salt Lake City, which overloaded due to the increased volume of data, magnifying the problem.

The FAA could not immediately calculate the number of flight delays caused by the problem, which was made worse by bad weather, Spitaliere said.

Although the computer problem was fixed shortly before 11 a.m. Friday, its impact lingered on into the late afternoon, especially in New York, where computer systems took two extra hours to get back online, Spitaliere said. She said the flight delays in the rest of the country were not as severe.

Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the problem forced controllers to enter flight information manually, which he described as a time-consuming practice. "With some of these East Coast airports, nothing is getting in right now," Church said Friday afternoon.

AMR Corp.'s American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner acknowledged the computer troubles and said the nation's largest carrier experienced about 50 cancellations on the East Coast, with LaGuardia departures being hit the hardest.

Hundreds of flights in both directions were delayed for two to three hours at LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International Airports, said Steve Coleman, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Betsy Talton, a spokeswoman for Delta Air Lines Inc., said the Atlanta-based airline was experiencing delays of roughly two hours Friday in the Northeast, but she attributed the backlog to thunderstorms.

Linda Rutherford, a spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines Co. said the airline experienced delays on about 40 percent of its 3,300 daily flights — the majority due to the air-traffice control problems.

Earlier this year, the FAA highlited an expanded air traffic control strategy intended to minimize weather-related delays this summer. The agency's "airspace flow program" is designed to allows airlines to choose between flying longer routes to avoid stormy weather or accepting delays that are aggravating for fliers and costly for the industry.

FAA officials said the program would allow airlines to choose between taking a delay or flying around the storm.

[michellem99-2009]

Where their back up computer system. If they don't have one they ought. The flying public is boarding planes and their is no back up computer system to handle the over load.

[pvplatoon]

FAA has an unwritten motto of %u201Cexcellence in mediocrity%u201D so it is no wonder that there was no backup. There is no backup in place for when the 50% of controllers that are now eligible to retire do so; that%u2019s the FAA way; know there%u2019s a problem, wait until it breaks, break it again and then cry to congress that the FAA had no knowledge and couldn%u2019t of prevented it (so give us lots of money and we%u2019ll fix it). Look at the Flight Service Stations contractor that was fined for poor performance. Everyone connected to the project knew that the contractor couldn%u2019t perform as promised but the FAA pushed the firing of 2500 controllers and gave the contract to Lockheed/Martin over even congressional objections.
Excellence in Mediocrity.

just my humble opinion,
as an Air Traffic Controller.

[brianbwb-2009]

to ncolsens,

The IT tech has no decision making power re BDCs, if the company he works for, or the airline that subbed the contract wants to cut corners, BDCs are among the first casualties.

Maybe an investigation into the contract and its execution should be carried out in public, even though privately owned, it is still used as public transportation.

We need to know who decides that backups are not necessary to protect the public.

As a retired computer engineer I know of these problems and it does happen all the time. I just feel sorry for the poor IT staff that will have to answer to this. Guess they did not think to have a backup domain controller (BDC)?